Scene it on Friday – AOTC Scene #13

Why is it that when I write about AOTC, I always tend to get a little worked up? Oh, that’s right, because it’s the worst movie in the entire saga.

Interesting, and kind of dumb, about this scene is that Jango gives Zam the tools to use for the assassination. When you hire an assassin, aren’t you basically asking them to get the job done without helping them? You don’t want to be part of it or you would have done it yourself. So Jango gives her the Kouhuns, and she puts them in a droid that delivers them to Padmé’s apartment, all of which did not require her to be there in person. Therefore, Jango Fett could have done this whole thing himself! Seeing how fast Zam got caught, clearly she’s not the smartest assassin who knows how to deal with Jedi. And I know this is a different scene – but why was Jango even hanging out when Zam got caught? This whole operation started off on the wrong foot and was just awful all the way through. *shakes head* So he kills her before she reveals who hired her, but if you have an assassin that’s going to give you away anyway, then why did you hire them? You didn’t hire them to hang out and see if the operation went off successfully. You hire them hoping that it goes through and you don’t have to worry about it. Major flaw in this movie. One of many, unfortunately.

This is the first scene in the prequels where we see Jango Fett! I remember being pretty pumped to see him and then actually not liking his armor at all. It was way too shiny and new. Oh, and what was with his voice? He sounded nothing like Boba. Oh, but you know, they could have different accents…but wait, Boba is a clone of Jango, so he should have the same accent… (Tangent – when Django Unchained came out this past Christmas season, did you all think of Jango Fett every time you heard his name?)

Ok, this next part is probably not interesting to anyone but me:

“Changeling” is primarily used in fantasy novels/genre or old folk tales when a baby was stolen and replaced with a goblin, troll, fairy, elf or something of that nature. When I heard Anakin say in the club that he thought Zam was a “changeling”, I just thought…what?

But I’m beginning to realize more and more as I write these Scene it on Friday’s that Lucas really isn’t the most original person on paper. I think he conceptualizes things amazingly well (biggest understatement ever), but in terms of writing it on a piece of paper…nah, not so much. If we look back at Scene it on Friday’s we see in scripts that General Grievous had a “wheel bike”, Jawas have a “sandcrawler”, he describes the Pit Droid as “little droid”, and now Zam is a “changeling”. George Lucas goes for the most descriptive term ever and then the final team (some branch of Lucasfilm – whoever that is) decides whether or not they want to keep his original names or change it up. Out of the four terms above, two of them were kept, so Lucas has a 50% success rate of keeping the names!

EXTERIOR: SKYSCRAPER LEDGE – NIGHT

An armor-clad bounty hunter, JANGO FETT, waits on the ledge of a skyscraper as another bounty hunter, ZAM WESELL, a CHANGELING, steps from her hovering speeder and approaches FETT.

ZAM WESELL: I hit the ship, but they used a decoy.

JANGO FETT: We’ll have to try something more subtle this time, Zam. My client is getting impatient.

FETT hands ZAM a transparent tube about a foot long containing centipede-like KOUHUNS.

JANGO FETT: Take these. Be careful. They’re very poisonous.

ZAM attaches her veil across the bottom of her face. She turns to leave, but FETT calls her back.